In the world of Miguel Méndez,
storytelling is not linear. There are multiple intersections, progressions and
digressions. Inside is outside, and distortions are simplified.

It's a literary world created over
78 years living on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, filled with
complexities to the outsider but clear to Méndez's eyes and ears.

An author and professor emeritus
of Spanish at the University of Arizona, Méndez is cited in numerous anthologies
of Latino and Chicano literature.

His 1974 "Peregrinos de Aztlán,"
later translated as "Pilgrims in Aztlán," is considered a seminal work in
Chicano literature, a genre rooted in the Mexican-American immigrant experience.
He has authored about 40 books and essays, including his 1996 autobiography,
"Entre letras y ladrillos," translated as "From Labor to Letters."

Méndez has done all this and more
with a fifth-grade education.

"I read as many books as I could.
My house was filled with books," said Méndez.

We talked in his small UA office,
which he shares with junior professors, in the basement of the UA's Modern
Languages Building. The office, with its institutional metal desks and chairs,
belies the body of work Méndez has created since his 1974 landmark.

Méndez, who was born in Bisbee,
has chronicled border life through his novels, essays, short stories and poetry.
He continues to pore through his history and the stories of Yaquis, Anglos,
Mexicans, pachucos, blue-collar workers, bosses, women and men.

"I can't stop writing," he said,
while telling me several stories of his life.

The people in his cuentos
are those whom he knew growing up in an ejido, a communal farm, in Sonora
after his family was forcibly repatriated to Mexico during the Great Depression.
He returned north when he was 14 to work in the agricultural fields and later as
a bricklayer in Tucson after World War II.

The words in his stories are those
spoken by the forgotten, by the hopeful, the angry and the kind denizens of
Sonora and Arizona.

In Peregrinos, Méndez challenges
the reader to follow the irregular story line of an imaginary but realistic
border town. It's a powerful piece of introspection recognized for Méndez's
command of language, both impeccable Spanish and lively border slang, and for
its gritty imagery. Peregrinos is also respected for its unvarnished view of the
treatment of Yaquis on both sides of the border and the non-romanticized tales
of immigrants crossing the border.

The love of literature came from
his parents. His Mexican-born father was a miner and later an agricultural
worker. His mother was born in Douglas and was bilingual.

As a young man working in Tucson,
Méndez would spend his free hours at the old Carnegie Free Library, now the
Tucson Children's Museum, and the UA library. When he had a few extra dimes, he
bought books at his favorite bookstore on Meyer Street Downtown, run by a trio
of brothers, refugees from the 1936 Spanish civil war.

He remembered that one of the
brothers gave him a book by Russian author Feodor Dostoevski.

"I devoured it and went back for
more. They gave me all his books," Méndez said.

Méndez said he didn't intend to
write a classic Chicano novel. He said he purposely wrote a novel that mirrored
the experience of life on the border.

He worked on the novel for more
than five years, at night after a hard day of constructing homes for Tucson's
exploding population of newcomers from other parts of the country.

Few of his friends knew about his
secret passion. "I was very stubborn. I would stay up late at night reading and
writing," he said.

One day he had a friend read his
manuscript. His friend, a college educator, urged him to publish his work.

Méndez did — in
Guadalajara, Mexico. The
initial run of 5,000 copies sold out quickly, and Peregrinos was republished in
the U.S.

In the early '70s, Méndez taught
Spanish and Chicano literature at Pima Community College, then in its infancy.
In 1984, Méndez received his honorary doctorate degree from the UA and began
teaching full time. He has lectured widely in Spain and Mexico and this country.

While Méndez lives in a bilingual
world, he works exclusively in Spanish. His books have been translated into
English, Portuguese, Italian, Swiss, Dutch and other languages.

But English is uncomfortable for
him. "I never had time to study English, to learn it well enough to teach and
write," Méndez said in Spanish.

It's a dichotomy to some but
perfectly acceptable to Méndez. English is not his world.

"My passion is in Spanish," he
said.

● Reporter Ernesto "Neto" Portillo
Jr. has deep roots in Tucson. His maternal grandparents came here in 1931. His
maternal great-great-grandfather, Argentine-born Onofre Navarro, lived in Tucson
beginning in the 1860s. Portillo can be contacted at 807-8414 or
eportillo@azstarnet.com.